Attendance concerns #SOLC25 5/31

Thanks to one of my colleagues, many of us have this sticker on our laptops:

You would think that this would help us remember to turn in our attendance for every class every day, but if our Vice Principal is to be believed (and he seems reliable enough), it does not.

As a result of my inability to submit attendance for all of my classes before 4pm, I have written myself an attendance letter.

(NB: Our lovely administrators would never actually write a letter like this!)

Dear [Employee Name],

We are writing to express our concern regarding your recent attendance pattern: specifically, [insert problem here: you keep forgetting to turn it in].

Our records indicate that you sometimes take attendance as soon as class begins. We commend you for your optimism! We know that on those days, invariably, at least 12 students arrive late – generally walking in one by one over a 45-minute period – and thanks to our fancy tracking system, you have to keep a record of the time at which each student enters the class. We understand that this might be difficult for you, but noting their arrival time is imperative for our systems.

We are here to support you. May we suggest noting arrivals on a piece of paper and hoping you don’t misplace it before you enter the data later in the day? Do you even have paper near you? If not, why not? If so, where do you keep it? And do you manage to keep a pen, too? That would be impressive organization for a teacher who is also moving about the room to respond to her students. Alternately, perhaps you could pause your instruction, freeze the projected computer screen each time another student enters, then navigate to our school attendance site and immediately enter their arrival. Would that disrupt your teaching? If so, what is your plan to manage that problem?

Consistent attendance taking is crucial to the smooth operation of our school. Your attendance-taking pattern has impacted [explain specific impacts, e.g., our records]. According to our computerized records, your period Z class has nearly perfect attendance, despite the fact that one student no longer attends school at all. We note, too, that you insist that this class is “nearly unmanageable” with “students entering and leaving at will.” This implies that perhaps you are forgetting to submit your attendance for this class.

We are here to support you. Have you tried using a hall pass system? Perhaps students in this class would be willing to write their arrival and departure times on a piece of paper strategically placed near the door. Attention: do not write student names where others can see them; this might be shaming. We realize that all the other students have seen the late arrivals; nevertheless, we invite you to manage attendance privately. Maybe you can place the paper a little out of the way? And put a cover on it? And you will probably want to attach a pencil. We are certain your students will use this paper appropriately. Also, please note that even if a student spends 70 minutes of the 75-minute class period “in the bathroom”, you should still mark that student present and note the time they arrived.

We encourage you to discuss any underlying issues that may be affecting your ability to maintain regular attendance, and we highly doubt that your attendance records reflect anything close to reality. Please reach out to [supervisor’s name] to discuss potential solutions and support options available to address these concerns. Please note that [supervisor’s name] is unwilling to text you every. single. day to remind you to do your attendance. That’s what your laptop sticker is for.

We value your contributions to the team and want to work with you to ensure your attendance meets school expectations.

Sincerely,

[Name]

[Title]

Teacher Math #SOLC25 3/31

Word problem:
Having been made aware – repeatedly – that photocopying is consistently the largest line item in the school’s budget, a teacher has nevertheless decided to make photocopies for a grade 9 English class. The activity will require only one day, so students who are absent today will not need a copy. 24 students are enrolled in the class. How many photocopies should the teacher make in order to have enough for all the students without “wasting” money?

Break down using the GRASS method.

GIVEN: Read the question carefully. Figure out what values are given.
24 students are enrolled in the class.

REQUIRED: Figure out what is required.
Enough – but not too many – photocopies for the students who attend class today.

ANALYSIS: Analyze the question and use appropriate math operations.
It’s one week before March Break and one (1) student has already left on vacation. Their parent notified you. Experience tells you that up to two (2) more students may have already left without letting anyone know.

24-1-1 = 22 OR
24-1-2 = 21

It’s the first week of Ramadan and class is at the end of the day. There are at least seven (7) Muslim students in the class. Some of them will be fasting, and some of them may be fasting for the first time in their lives. This is difficult, so some of them may go home before the end of the school day. Still, it’s only Monday, so probably most of them will try to stick it out. Estimate: one (1)

22–0= 22 OR
22–1= 21 OR
21–1= 20

The flu has been going around. Loads of students and teachers were out last week, some for up to five (5) days. Today’s list of absent teachers is long, and during period one, about a third (⅓) of the class was absent. This class was pretty healthy last week. Are they more likely to be sick this week as a result? Check the online attendance to see if anyone has already been called in sick by their parents. One student is marked absent. Estimate: at least one (1) and up to three (3) sick students.

22–1= 21 OR
22–2= 20 OR
22–3= 19 OR
21–1= 20 OR
21–2= 19 OR
21–3 = 18 OR
20–1= 19 OR
20–2= 18 OR
20–3= 17

Last week you sent emails home to several families addressing student behaviours. Of the four (4) families you contacted, two (2) replied. How many of these students will attend class today? Educated guess based on experience: three (3) will attend and one (1) will skip in frustration.

21–1= 20 OR
20–1= 19 OR
19–1= 18 OR
18–1= 17 OR
17–1= 16

Finally, students may not be able to attend due to “Acts of God”: “I missed my bus after lunch” or “I got suspended for fighting in the bathroom” or “My best friend’s boyfriend just posted on IG and another girl was in the picture so I had to stay with her because she was so upset” or “Sorry, Miss, I forgot it was a Day 1 and I went to my Day 2 class and I only realized it wasn’t my class after 25 minutes.” Estimate for today: an optimistic zero (0)

WAIT: don’t forget to add in the extra copy for the student who loses their sheet between the time you hand it out and the time they need to use it. (approximate elapsed time: 8.3 seconds)

20+1= 21 OR
19+1= 20 OR
18+1=19 OR
17+1= 18 OR
16+1= 17

SOLUTION: Solve the question.
Maximum photocopies required: 23
Minimum photocopies required: 17

Repeat these calculations for each of today’s classes.

STATEMENT: State your answer in simple words.
For today’s classes, in order not to waste money, the teacher requires somewhere between 17 and 70 kajillion photocopies.

Realize after all of this that at least three students will be gone for some or all of the class because of a volleyball game. Their coaches posted about this on the email conference three (3) minutes after you finished photocopying.

Good luck!

Anything you can do to a cloud #SOLC25 2/31

Sheri set a timer and did a free write for six minutes because someone else did the same, so here I am, jumping on the bandwagon on day two. And I should know how to do this: I freewrite all the time in my teaching practice because I am forever trying to convince my students that it is OK – even good – to just write. My goal for them by the end of the semester is seven minutes. I have no idea why, but there it is. And truthfully, for grade 9, at this point we’re aiming for five solid minutes of writing.

I need to admit that I have deleted a few times already – but I swear this is mostly free writing and if I were handwriting this, I would have just crossed things out, so that counts.

Why do I free write with them? I honestly think that seeing someone else write, watching their process and their struggles, noticing how they pause and keep going, seeing what they throw away and what they keep, can help students understand that writing isn’t about presenting perfected ideas – in fact, it’s about the opposite of that: writing is about honing ideas, checking them out, looking at them from different angles, dressing them up in words and seeing what they look like, finding the places where the ideas aren’t entirely complete…

That’s a lot of mixed metaphors, but hey, it’s a free write.

So I write in front of my students, near my students, among my students. In class, I tell students that a preposition is anything you can do to a cloud – you can go in front of a cloud, near a cloud, through a cloud, over a cloud – and then we write sentences with prepositions, playing with making very long, very silly sentences.

I started this blog in part to experience for myself some of the things my students experience: writing on a deadline, writing when I don’t feel like it, writing when I don’t have much to say, writing knowing that someone else will read it.

Time is up. Now I’ve done my one-minute post-writing clean-up (another trick I use – so they re-read and make a few changes) so I can post this. Then, tomorrow, when we’re writing, I’ll have proof that freewriting is “real” and even shareable. Maybe this will even help them write more.

Lost plot

A poem written upon learning that many of my grade 9 students are not 100% sure what “plot” means and most have never seen a plot graph or heard many basic narrative terms. They did have some great guesses for the meanings of various words; it’s just that they were mostly, well, off.

Lost Plot

They’ve lost the plot.
They’re not sure what they’re planning
or where they are landing
or planning to land.

They’re certain that plot
is a place or a person
who’s pretty important and
they’ve got this in hand.

They say not to worry –
they’ll figure out the story.
They’re already exposing
and plotting, they think.

Then rising and falling
with a giggle in the offing because
– gasp –
there’s a climax and they know what that means.

They’ve got resolution –
it’s like revolution and quite near the middle –
or that’s what they thought.
It’s when things come together
for the person (or whatever)
and no one’s left out, so the story’s complete.

Never mind definitions,
they’re now on a mission
to finish this worksheet and get out the door.

So here I am plotting
to break down the story, incite some new learning,
maybe teach some new words.
Not antagonistic, I’m being realistic,
But honest to goodness they all should know plot.

About my grade

Friday
On Friday, I give him his “evidence record” – the sheet of paper that shows the grades a student has earned on various assignments throughout the semester. While I’m excited about the recent series of high scores he’s earned, his eyes move directly to the list of “Incomplete” work, assignments he simply didn’t do at the beginning of the school year.

“So,” he says, and he slumps as if the paper in his hand is almost too heavy to hold, “how many of these do I need to do to catch up?”

Grade 12 did not start well for him. I didn’t know him well enough to ask, but I’ve been teaching long enough to recognize a smart kid in a bad set of circumstances without needing to know the particulars.

“None.”

He looks up. “What?”

I eye him, “What would you learn by going back and doing these assignments?”

“Not to do it again.” His answer is almost rote, and maybe I imagine it, but I’d swear there is a tinge of despair.

“Really?” I wear my best skeptical look.

“Probably not,” he admits.

“Well, I’d say that our work has gotten harder, not easier,” (This is true: he skipped “This I Believe” in favour of Hamlet and increasingly complex analysis and writing) “so doing previous assignments won’t teach you much and won’t show me much. We’re supposed to look at the ‘most recent, most consistent’ evidence we have. And recently, your consistent evidence shows excellence.”

He needs to confirm what he’s just heard. He needs the actual words. “So I don’t need to do these?”

“Nope.”

He stares at the paper in wonder, then he looks up. “Are you a hugger?” he asks. “Can I hug you?”

I say yes, and I get a wonderful hug from a near-adult who maybe just learned that sometimes mistakes can and should be forgiven – a far better lesson than whatever grade is on the paper that was weighing him down a minute ago.

Monday
On Monday, she stalks into the classroom, wearing a tragic look. She plunks her backpack down and yanks out her book. I can’t say she slams it on her desk, but it’s close. I’ve gotten used to her emotional highs and lows, so I approach her warily.

“Rough weekend?”

“Yes.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“No.”

Oh, so that’s how this is going to be, I think.I back off. She glares. Dark circles ring her eyes – and her eyes follow me as I set up the classroom for the morning. I try again.

“You ok?”

“I didn’t get in to my university.”

I pause. I’ve known this might be coming. She is not doing well in English, and English is a gatekeeping class: universities tend to require certain levels in English class. She’s been a little mad at me since midterm marks came out – but her disappointment hasn’t increased her work quantity or quality.

I stop what I’m doing and go to her desk to give her my full attention. “Oh no!” I am truly sad for her even though I am, I think, less surprised than she is.

“It was my English mark.” I would say she snarls, but she’s too sad for a snarl, and now tears appear in her eyes.

“I’m so sorry,” I say softly – and I am, I really, really am. I wish I could magically make this better; I wish I could go back in time and help her learn the skills she needs to be successful in this class; I wish I could tell her she’s doing better now. Instead, I am stuck trying to support the actual human being in front of me, and I know that simply giving her a good grade that isn’t supported by her work doesn’t help her in the long run. “What do you need?”

She tells me the number grade she needs. It *might* be within reach – though honestly it will be a stretch, and we only have two weeks before the exam.

“Ok,” I say. “Let’s work with that. Let’s concentrate on preparing for the exam.”

“But I’m terrible at essays,” and now she really is crying.

“Ok, but I can help. We can work together. And you might improve.”

She might. She will need to use our next classes well. She will need to come into the exam with her notes in order, having considered what she wants to write. She will need to work. I want to promise that it’s within reach. I want to comfort her, but I bite my tongue. Comfort is cold when it’s a lie.

She hears what I’m not saying and glares at me again as she wipes away her tears. “Fine,” she says tersely, and opens her book.

Tuesday
On Tuesday, I wake to an email. Last night I “released” marks from an assignment Grade 9 students did before Winter Break. Honestly, I’d returned them before the break, when the assignment was due, but more assignments have come in, and I’m trying to get my grade book in order before we get to the end of the semester. I’d like to give the grade 9s a chance to catch up or improve, especially if they’ve learned something new.

The email that I sent out shared their scores as a fraction out of 14.

The email I get from the student says, “Is this bad?”

Technically, I am an English teacher, but truly I am a teacher. I know that a person should be able to guesstimate – at the very least – if they’ve done well based on a fraction. I write back, “To figure out a mark like this, you are looking for the percentage. To find the percentage, you divide the first number (the part) by the second number (the whole). In this case your score is 12 divided by 14. The rest is up to you. Luckily, you’ll be getting back several more marks like this in the next few days, so you’ll get lots of practice!”

I wonder why this student didn’t know that they’d done well. It was a “quiz” (in the sense that there were answers, but it was open) in a Google form. Do they not remember it? Were they uncertain of their responses? Were they guessing on some? When I took quizzes, I usually had a sense of whether I’d done well.

I wonder how the student will react to my email. Will they be frustrated that I didn’t simply answer? Will they calculate their score? Will they calculate the grades they get in the next few days?

Then my brain wanders to grades in general. I wonder about them a lot. I wonder what they mean to students, parents, teachers, administrators, universities… I know they don’t mean the same thing to everyone. I wonder about numbers that make people give hugs and cry and send emails. I wonder about how these numbers fit into learning.

But it’s time to go, so I put my wonderings away and gather my things, glad that I’m not getting a fraction, percentage or number of any sort to try to tell me how I’m doing.

Happily Ever After

I’m on my prep, heading back to the classroom and slowly catching up to the two girls wandering down the hallway ahead of me, deep in conversation. For what must be the millionth time this December alone, I am trying to decide if it’s worth telling students that they really should be in class: my brain is on autopilot. Then I hear one of them say, “it’s happILY ever after.”

“HappILY?” her friend repeats, shaking her head quizzically.

“Yes.” She re-emphasizes the ily and the girls slow even more.

“But why?”

“I don’t know. But it is so.”

“Why not ‘happy forever’?”

“Yes, in Spanish it is ‘happy forever’ but here is it ‘happILY ever after.’”

They have nearly stopped. The questioner continues to shake her head, repeating “happILY” under her breath a few times. And now I have caught up to them.

“I can explain the ‘-ily,’” I say. Two faces turn towards me with such obvious pleasure that I nearly laugh. I explain that happily is an adverb and that it tells how they lived. I liken it to lentamente in Spanish. They nod gravely.

Then, I add, “but I don’t know why it’s ‘ever after.’”

Their interest bubbles over. “Si! In Spanish we say feliz para siempre – happy forever. So easy. Forever.”

Now we are in front of my classroom door. Inside, my student teacher is waiting. And really, the girls should be in class. So I shoo them off, saying, “I’ll look it up! Come back if you want to!” and off they go, hopefully to class, hopefully happILY.

What are we really teaching?

By the time I get to our office, lunch is already in full swing. I catch bits of at least three different conversations as I walk past the large table and plunk my things at my desk in the corner. Backpack, Chromebook, tea mug. Then I plop myself into my chair and take a deep breath. For a few seconds, I just sit and breathe, sit and listen.

This doesn’t last, of course. Time is an educator’s most precious commodity, and even lunchtime is limited. I grab my lunch bag and make my way toward the table and my colleagues. As I sit, I hear one teacher exclaim to another, “Right? He’s soooo rude. The other day he called me a [very bad word for women]. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I ignored it, obviously, and I reported it, but of course nothing will happen.”

The second teacher nods along, sympathetically, then adds, “Does he do that thing where you say something to him and he flat-out ignores you, then he asks the male teacher and gets the same answer? And then he does whatever the male teacher said and sort of smirks at you while he does it?”

“Of course he does.”

They are laughing now, comrades in arms, relieved that this experience is not theirs alone. The stories continue.

My heart has dropped. They are talking about the young person I wrote about in my last blog post, the same young person who I’d hoped I was beginning to understand a little better. I start to tell them that I have *just* written about him, that I think there is a way forward, but I hesitate.

I think about the wariness the two girls displayed last week when they encountered him. I think about the way I felt last year, the way he treated me. I think about what I am hearing now in the lunchroom.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what we should do. What are we responsible for teaching? English? History? Math? Yes, of course. But educators talk, too, about the “whole student” and the “hidden curriculum” and the things schools teach based on what we accept and don’t accept. I wonder if my decision to lean into his “humour” – which is so often rude – is actually harming him? Perhaps those of us who have worked to “meet him where he’s at” need to hold him to a different standard? And if we did, would anything change? How much influence do we have anyway?

In the office, the conversation swirls and the topics change. The bell rings, everyone heads to classrooms, and the rhythm of the school day subsumes my moment of doubt. Periodically throughout the week, I wonder and even worry, but there’s never a moment to find another teacher to sit and talk through the larger implications of these questions. Mostly, my thoughts remain my thoughts.

*****

This morning, he walks by my classroom carrying a large box. “Christmas lights!” he calls out delightedly. And even though he has interrupted my class, even though he is too loud, and he shouldn’t be in the hallway, I call back, “I love it!” and I give him a big smile.

Here is where we grow

School doesn’t start for at least half an hour, but I’m already letting two students into my classroom because one of them thinks she left her vest here yesterday, and ninth graders often move in pairs. As I jiggle the key in the lock, a large figure lumbers up behind us.

“Oh!” I smile, “I heard a rumour that you passed your Civics class!”

He lurches to a halt in the near-empty hallway and glares at me. My key finally turns, opening the door just as he leans forward and breathes, “I cheated on all my tests” – only he says “testes” and, their eyes wide, the girls practically tumble into the classroom. He shuffles away.

In the room, the lost vest is retrieved and then, in a significantly more graceful echo of what just happened, one child leans towards me and murmurs, “Why would he say that?”

My mind clicks backwards through the moment, and I realize what they think just happened. “He was embarrassed,” I reassure them, “because I gave him a compliment. Some people have a hard time being praised. He did not cheat on his tests.” I emphasize the word tests.

They nod, unconvinced, and head into the hallway just as he returns. They flee. He stops again and looks me up and down. “Do you still have that box?”

I know exactly what he’s talking about. “Oh, yes!” I feign distraction as I move to the front corner of the room. The box he wants is hidden under a desk. “I was just wondering if maybe I should get rid of it,” I pause, “but if you really did pass Civics, I suppose you could get a prize.”

He squints his eyes. “Two.”

“Hmm…” I pretend to consider this. “Well, first I need to know if you cheated on any tests.”

He glances around, wary. No one is nearby. “No,” he admits, and I swear I see a bit of a blush on his cheeks, but I could be making that up.

For the next fifteen minutes, he rummages through my “Box of Terrible Prizes.” He holds up various items, considering. He tells me which things are still there from last year (hint: it’s most of them), and I remind him that they really are terrible prizes. Undeterred, he checks out tchotchkes and useless plastic toys. He asks more than once if I have anything that makes noise. I do not. He points out prizes that he brought in for trades. Eventually, I remind him that class will start soon, so he makes his choice. Two prizes. No noisemakers. Delighted, toys in hand, he shuffles out of the room, leaving me aglow.

******

Last year, when he was in grade 9, I taught him. Well, “taught” might be a bit of an exaggeration. Last year, we were in the same classroom and sometimes he kind of did English-y things. Often, he was rude to me and others. Sometimes he was very rude. By the end of the school year, even after he’d left my class, every time he saw me in the hallways, he sneered things like, “Oh. It’s you. I hate seeing you,” or “Seeing you makes my day awful.” I am embarrassed to admit that, eventually, I let this make me angry.

Sure, I had read his school records and communicated with his middle school teachers, so I knew he needed a lot of time and stability to settle into a place. I knew his IEP and had read all his old report cards, but he drove me up a wall. I wasn’t alone; few teachers connected with him. I couldn’t imagine how his middle school teachers had been able to find what they confidently called his “sense of humour.” All I saw was an angry young man.

One thing about a school, though, is that it’s full of kids – and kids grow. And, whether we like it or not, we’re all sort of stuck there together for a few years while they do this. He is lucky to have a Resource room full of people who have kept an open mind about his growth. I will argue that I am luckier that he kept an open mind about me – or maybe he never quite realized that I was actually angry. And I’m lucky that those same colleagues have helped me see him more clearly, too.

*****

This morning, I realize that I get his humour now: I laugh as he moans and groans about the quality of my terrible prizes; I snicker when he tells me that I need more, and that I’m clearly not giving out enough prizes – maybe this year’s grade nines aren’t as good as he was. I fake exasperation when he lingers as my 12th graders come in, and he scowls when I make him leave, but he’s here. He’s still here. And here is where we grow.

Once an English teacher…

The first hint was on page 194. Blue ink.

I was a little startled. I mean, this is a trashy romance. The main characters murmur and gaze longingly. I was enjoying the story, but I wasn’t exactly on the lookout for grammar errors; in fact, I’d consciously decided to overlook some of them. And yet…

“As if”? I nearly laughed. This is my fellow reader’s quibble? I mentally shrugged, then moved on. Until it happened again. And again. And again. Someone had taken her blue pen to the novel and fixed “like” – and only “like” – a dozen times throughout the novel.

Wait. I lie. Once, she fixed a typo. Indeed.

I imagine her reading along, overlooking the missed subjunctive, ignoring the diction (minx!), letting the anachronisms lie… and then she hits her limit… “like.” She shudders. She thinks of the years she spent in the classroom, teaching students when to use “like” and when to use “as if.” She thinks of endless hours of grading essays, the constant battle against the demise of the English language. Her fingers tingle, and before she knows it, she has a pen – because of course she always has a pen nearby – in her hand, and she has made the correction.

Once she’s started, she cannot stop. The pen is uncapped, the errors egregious – at least in her eyes. Surreptitiously at first, then with greater and greater glee, she fixes the error each time it appears. As the novel climaxes in a crescendo of smouldering looks and husky moans, with one final flourish, she amends the typo in indeed and, triumphant, re-caps her pen. The world is now a little more orderly.

The next day, chastely, she returns the book to the library. Maybe she glances about as she slips the book into the returns slot; maybe she holds her head high, firm in the knowledge that she is right.

One way or another, I got double the pleasure out of book two of Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton series: trashy romance, and proof that English teachers never really leave the classroom.

September Looms

I gave myself the summer off, mostly. From blogging, from prepping for classes, from worrying about who can or cannot read and what needs to change or stay the same. I tried to actually relax – or at least not to be actively stressed. I attend zero conferences. I abandoned books I didn’t like. I didn’t plan a big family trip. I hung out with friends and family and quit Twitter. Overall, I think I did ok.

I still have a week left before school starts, so this morning I rolled out of bed and plopped almost directly into our oversized beanbag to read a little of Jhumpa Lahiri’s Whereabouts. Instead of immersing myself in the story, however, I found myself wondering if I could finish it and return it to the library today, another item checked off the before-school to-do list that’s already filling up. My mind gleefully got into the go-getter groove, and soon I was listing as much as I was reading. Gah! Not what I had wanted.

I tried to shake off the looming lists and plans. I tried to read one more short chapter, but Hera – our cat – was having none of it. She scaled the back of the bean bag and dragged her tongue across my cheek. Skritch. Then she did it again. She clambered onto my chest, batted down the book, and looked me in the eyes. I knew she was right: time for tea and then into school to set up the classroom.

So I got up, neither fully relaxed nor fully tense, and lumbered down the stairs towards September.